Today’s Editorial December 06: Get serious about protecting planet

Whether you buy into the whole global warming argument or not, we all should do what we can to keep our country and planet clean.

Opposition Leader McKeeva Bush is fresh back from a climate change conference and is charged up about getting the Cayman Islands cleaner.

And he plans to start with our school-aged children.

We think it’s a smart move.

While at the conference Mr. Bush heard a representative from UNESCO talk about its Sand Watch programme, a project jointly coordinated between the Caribbean Sea Project and the Coastal and Beach Stability in the Caribbean Project.

It focuses on the islands in the Caribbean and seeks to develop in-country capabilities so those island states can measure, assess and manage beach resources.

The objectives, according to UNESCO’s website, are to reduce the level of pollution in the Caribbean Sea; to train school children in the scientific observation of beaches through field measurement and data analysis; and to help school children use the information they have collected to better manage the region’s beaches.

It’s already working in Turks and Caicos, the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas.

And it can work here.

If we teach our children to be good stewards of our planet we help to ensure the future of their generation and generations to come.

But the task of taking care of our environment shouldn’t be placed on our children alone.

We should all be doing what we can to help keep Cayman and the world clean.

Little measures such as turning out lights when leaving a room, turning off the television when no one is watching and cutting down on the time it takes you to shower to save water can all healp.

Then there is always the issue of recycling.

It’s been touted by our leaders and private groups, but we’ve yet to see a viable recycling programme in place.

We are too small of a country to continue to overload our landfill.

It’s time that a recycling programme is put in place and everyone is required to participate.

We have only one planet and we were put here to be good stewards of it.